AN : hello, dear readers. Here comes another chapter. This one has three parts, each of them related to one particular member of the Forsaken Sons.
This chapter ends with a cliffhanger, but don't worry : you will have the answers you crave ... but not in the next chapter, I think. If I follow the plan I have right now, it will only be in the chapter after that one that every plot thread I have prepared will come together for the climax of the Parecxis Campain.
Also, Black Library has made a demand for submissions on the theme 'The Imperium of Man'. I am going to try to send them one, of course. But don't worry - it won't affect my writing for this website. Next will be either another chapter of this fic, or the Index Astartes of the Ultramarines for the Roboutian Heresy. I already have a pile of notes for the latter, but I still have a lot of material to read in search of ideas. All I can say so far is that I intend to continue my theme of 'reverseal of fortunes', with the greatest heroes becoming the worst villains and vice-versa.
If you like this chapter, please leave a review. If you have any question, or a theory about what is going to happen next, please share it ! I would like to see if my foreshadowing worked well before the big reveal. Reviews for the last chapter showed that you were eager to find out the truth ! And of course, if you have an idea for a short story or a question, PM me or leave it in a review.
That's all for now. See you next time !
Zahariel out.
I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
The wound in reality flickered. The power that had created it had started to fade seconds after the last Possessed had emerged from it, but the breach in the Veil remained – a scar upon the Materium that would take millenia to heal, if it ever did. For untold generations, Neverborn spirits would pass through the opening left by Merchurion's device and haunt Parecxis Alpha, driving people mad and leaving gruesome scenes in back alleys and dark corners. But other, things of a more obvious danger could pass through the crack in the universe as well, if enough power was expended to allow their crossing.
As the Blood Champion led the Possessed away from their entry point in the hive, the portal they had used briefly reopened. This time, the hole was a lot smaller, and it remained open for only a fraction of a second. But it was enough for someone to pass through and come crashing on the already splintered ground. Slowly, the creature rose to its feet, groaning in pain – not because of the impact, but because of other, deeper wounds that had been inflicted upon it.
Multicoloured smoke rose from the creature's body as the last remnants of Warp-matter dissolved away from its form, and the creature's appearance was revealed – not that there was anyone left alive in the vicinity to witness it. There stood a warrior of the Astartes, clad in dark blue ceramite with golden lighting patterns. Once, his face had been covered by a helmet shaped in the form of a leering skull, but the mask had merged with his own head under the reshaping touch of the Warp. Now his own eyes occupied the sockets of the pale skull, staring at the world before him without ever being able to close, tears of blood running down the skull's cheekbones in an endless flow. His right hand had also been altered, forever fused with the hilt of the power sword that had been dragged along with him into the Hell behind reality.
Zarl Korak, once a warrior of Forsaken Sons, once a Legionary of the Night Lords Legion, had returned to the world of the living – or, more accurately, he had been returned. Even now, he could feel the immaterial chains of the pact he had made tightening around his soul, searing into his very essence with agonizing torment. The pain he felt in his flesh was as nothing compared to that spiritual suffering – and that was nothing compared to what he had just escaped.
After his failure on this accursed sea vessel, Zarl had been dragged into the Empyrean by those daemons he had called upon to help him sow terror and destruction aboard the ship. Until that moment, he had not understood just how deep their hold over him truly was. He had thought that he could control them, or at the very least work with them so long as he gave them access to Imperial souls to torment instead of his own. And for a time, he had been right. But the moment it had looked like the Sons of Calth were going to win, the Neverborn had turned against him. Rather than aid him and take the souls of the loyalists, they had drained his strength and dragged him into their realm.
He had suffered in the Warp, suffered more than he had known it was possible to suffer – and as a son of Konrad Curze, he knew a lot about suffering. The worst part had probably been that, unlike the infinity of souls that burned in the Warp, he had actually been alive while inside it. His fate had been similar to those millions of humans who had been lost to the Sea of Souls during Warp transit, when their ship's Geller Field had failed. He had been a toy for the Neverborn, until he had managed to convince them to return him to reality. The price he had already paid had been steep, and the debt he owed them still even steeper, but he would pay it a hundred times and more if it meant he didn't have to return there.
And speaking of debts owed … he could feel it tugging at his consciousness : the psychic spoor of his prey. Among the many promises he had had to make in order to escape his torment, that one was most important, though he didn't know why the Neverborn put so much importance on someone who was, ultimately, only one mortal man. Regardless, killing the man would not only be sweet if indirect revenge, it would also considerably lessen his debt to the powers beyond the Veil. That was an opportunity he couldn't afford to miss.
Zarl began to move, following the impulse of the contract binding him. The Neverborn were guiding him, but he wasn't their puppet : he had avoided that, at least. But it wouldn't last – if he failed to lessen his debt to the daemons, they would slowly consume his soul, until there was nothing left of him but a shell of flesh, with just enough awareness left to realize how far it had fallen. He would avoid that fate, no matter the cost.
The former Night Lord moved through the war-torn hive-city, careful to avoid detection by both the defenders and the Forsaken Sons. While there was no question what the loyalists would do if they saw him, he wasn't sure about the warband's reaction either. The daemons had told him many things in the Warp, as they sought to torment his spirit as much as his flesh. They had told him Arken had sent him on a suicide mission, not a sabotage one. But then again, they had also told him that the Awakened One had done so out of fear of Zarl's growing power, and that his father would return to life at the Time of Ending. His mind may have been damaged by his time in the Sea of Souls, he was willing to accept that, but he wasn't foolish enough to believe all the whispers of the Neverborn.
Still, he had to be careful. If other Traitor Marines saw him, just the time he would waste explaining his presence and altered appearance to them might give his prey time to escape – or time for another to reach and kill it. And so he moved from cover to cover, avoiding the various battles between the forces scattered across the city. As far as he could tell, the battle was slowly progressing in the Forsaken Sons' favor : the Sons of Calth and their allies were fighting well, but there simply wasn't enough of them. However, what surprised him was that he didn't come across any civilian on his way toward his goal. If, as he suspected, Asthenar was the last loyalist hive on the planet, there should have been hundreds of millions of humans there. He assumed the Sons of Calth had put them away from the battlefield, but where could they possibly have hidden so many people ?
Another mental tug pulled his thoughts away from this mystery. He was approaching his quarry. Around him were several buildings that had gone through the various upheavals that had struck Parecxis and remained in relatively good condition. From his crouching position behind a pile of debris, Zarl saw people in dirty white uniforms entering and exiting a building on the other side of a plaza. His nose picked up the smell of disease, old blood and chemicals, and he quickly put the pieces together : this building was a field hospital of sorts, where the loyalists had gathered their wounded before the battle for Asthenar had begun in earnest. For a second, he wondered why they hadn't evacuated them to wherever they had hidden the civilians, but he dismissed the thought. There could be a hundred possible reasons, and it didn't matter to his current mission anyway.
Despite the battle raging on, there were two Sons of Calth guarding the hospital's entrance, accompanied with a dozen human soldiers. Zarl shook his head in disbelief. Was it any wonder that the loyalists were losing the war for the planet, if they wasted their fighters protecting those who had already become useless to them ?
Regardless, he needed to pass them and enter the building. His sense of his target had grown more precise as the distance between hunter and prey had decreased, and he was certain that the one he sought was within the hospital. It was difficult to explain exactly how his new perception worked : it was the result of the pact he had made with the Neverborn, and therefore not bound by logic or the constraints of his own mortal flesh. His brain was struggling to convert the information into something he could comprehend, translating a soul's aura and other mystical elements into colors, scents, and other sensations. Even that was a flawed process, that wrecked havoc on his mundane perceptions. On his way to the hospital, he had been able to taste the colors and see the scent of blood and destruction that filled the air several times as signals misfired in his grey matter. He doubted that was doing any good to his body, already damaged by the time he had spent in the Warp. The sooner he completed his mission and was free to seek medical aid from the Fleshmasters – and maybe counsel from the Coven – the better.
His mind started turning, considering possible ways of ingress. The building was standard Imperial design, and he quickly summoned the plans from his eidetic memory. Not all Astartes would have known the exact layout of Imperial architecture, but the Night Lord had hunted within them often enough that he had taken the time to memorize their layout. There should be other entrances to the building, and he doubted the Sons of Calth had positioned Astartes to guard each of them. Those who guarded the main gate were here in case one of the wandering packs found the hospital and decided to attack it – and such a group would charge in through the front door, not skulk around and seek a more secretive entry.
A few minutes and two broken necks later, he was inside, hiding behind a pile of empty boxes of medical supplies and considering his next move. While he had been able to avoid discovery outside through his own skills alone, doing so now was a forlorn hope. The hospital was bustling with activity – there were hundreds of patients and dozens of healers of various ranks and skills milling around, trying to aid those they could and ease the suffering of those they couldn't. Zarl's massive silhouette wasn't exactly hard to notice, and there was no way he could pass for a Son of Calth.
He could tear his way through the mortals and hope he reached his prey, did what he had come to do, and escape before the Sons of Calth caught him. But even with his sense of where his prey was and the fact that he doubted any guards were stationed inside the building, he doubted he would be quick enough. Even mere mortals could get in his way and slow him down, and the few seconds murdering a path through dozens of medics and patients would add to his time inside the hospital might just be enough for him to be caught. The Sons of Calth would react at once to news of a renegade presence, and after his last encounter with them, Zarl wasn't eager to face them again – at least not until he had battle-brothers on his own side.
That left him with only one option, as unwilling as he was to take it. Zarl took a deep breath, focused his thoughts away from the endless pain of his mutated eyes, and reached out with his mind toward the denizens of the Warp. They answered quickly – they were always watching him, and they knew the quandary he found himself in. Without him needing to make any request, Zarl felt their power spread over him, cloaking him from mortal eyes. At the same time, however, he also felt the chains tighten around his soul – in his efforts to lighten his debt, he now owed even more to the daemons.
The notion brought back old memories to the former Night Lord as he marched through the corridors, careful not to touch anything or anyone and thus reveal his presence. Back on Nostramo, in the days before the Eighth Legion's recruiters are selected him for induction in their ranks, his father and mother had been trapped in a similar situation. His father had taken a loan during his wife's difficult pregnancy in order to treat her, and his debt had never gone away. In time, the gang controlling the loan shark had managed to turn his father into their agent, forcing him to sell drugs and other illegal items for them in return for lowering his debt. Yet when Zarl had been taken away by the Night Lords, he knew that this debt was at least five times higher than it had been when he had been born twelve years prior.
Zarl didn't know what had happened to his parents after he had become a Night Lord. If they had managed to survive the years that had followed without angering the gang, then they had died in the planet's destruction when the Primarch had ordered it. Regardless, Zarl was certain that they had died still in debt. But while death had wiped the slate clean for them, it wouldn't be so easy in Zarl's case. As an Astartes, he could live centuries, millenia perhaps – he wasn't sure how the mutations afflicting him would influence his lifespan – but he could also die in any battle if luck was against him. He had to pay back his debt before the inevitable fate of every Legionary found him. Hell would be painful enough without the Neverborn 'rightfully' owning his soul. Yet the memory of his father reduced in what was effectively slavery brought forth a horrible vision : himself, thousands of years later, his every action controlled by his daemonic masters – reduced to little more than a puppet, but still able to stare through unblinking eyes.
He shook off the thought. As a son of Konrad Curze, fatalism was in his blood, but unlike his failed father, he refused to let it consume him. After this job was done, he could ask the help of the warband. Arken was powerful, and his name echoed strongly among the Neverborn. There was a way out of his situation, and he would find it. But first, he had to pay back enough of what he owed to allow him to move freely.
Several minutes later, the Astartes was up two stories. The pull on his consciousness had become a ravenous hunger gnawing at his mind, the Neverborn's thirst flowing into him. He was close now, so close that he could almost taste the soul of his prey. Only one corridor remained between him and the room from which radiated his target's presence – but it was filled with wounded humans. The hospital was clearly filled beyond its maximal capacity, and the lack of proper beds had forced the healers to lie their patients on the floor as comfortably as they could. There was no way Zarl could get through without bumping into someone – even a human would have found it nigh-impossible.
Time to abandon stealth, he decided, and the cloak of obfuscation that had shielded him from discovery fell immediately. Despite himself, the Chaos Marine took a second to savour the looks of shock and horror that spread among the mortals as their limited perceptions finally noticed the presence of the monster in their midst. Then, just as the first screams started, he began to run.
Twenty meters separated Zarl from the door behind which laid his objective. As best as the twisted machine-spirit of his armor could estimate, crossing this distance took him zero point seventy-two second and forty-seven gruesome deaths. The wounded's flesh and bones were crushed under his ceramite boots as he ran over them, while his sword cut apart any healer unfortunate enough to be in his way – or reach. The Neverborn pressing around him laughed in heinous delight, feeding off the pain and terror of the helpless humans.
Zarl crashed through the door, his armored body barely registering the impact. The room he emerged into was small and, like the rest of the building, cramped. There were two rows of beds and health-monitoring and sustaining machines, with just enough space between them for a careful physician to navigate. And in one of the bed furthest from the shattered door, staring straight at the Chaos Marine with surprise written plain on his face, was …
'There you are,' growled Zarl. 'I have been looking for you, Tarek.'
In the Warp, Zarl had learnt what had happened to the ship where he had met defeat. The Lady of the Three Seas had reached the hive-city of Talexorn, where the survivors had been evacuated before the ship herself had been sunk, in fear of other renegades hiding within and of possible daemonic corruption. But they had failed to notice an agent of the God of Plague, and soon Talexorn had been lost to Nurgle's servants. Death – and in some cases, a fate worse than death – had claimed hundreds of millions of lives, and only a handful of refugees had made it to Asthenar. Of those few lucky souls, only one had been aboard the Lady of the Three Seas : the ship's very captain, a man Zarl knew only by the name the Neverborn had called him when they had made him the offer for his return : Tarek.
Looking at the man, Zarl couldn't tell why the daemons cared so much about him. There was nothing special about him – he looked like any other of the thousands of humans Zarl had met and killed over the course of his decades of service to the Eighth Legion. At first glance, he seemed to be a little bigger, but that was hard to say for sure – all humans looked the same to Zarl, especially once they had spent a little time in the flaying pits, where he had spent the most time in their company.
And then his sight fell upon what the mortal had just pulled out of his hospital garb, and it felt as if white-hot needles had been pushed through his eyes and into his brain, while his whole body was locked in place as if in the throes of a seizure. He grunted in pain, but despite the agony, his eyes still were still open, and locked onto the source of this new torment. It was a circlet of metal encrusted with six stones that shone with an inner azure glow. The Neverborn hissed in rage, disgust and something that the Chaos Marine could only identify as fear at the sight of the trinket, and Zarl finally understood why he had been tasked with killing Tarek.
He forced himself to advance, ignoring the pain in his skull that increased with each step. Every time one of his foot was put in front of the other, the daemons pushed him a little more on his soul, yet he felt no fresh strength flowing through him – it was as if the Neverborn's actions in the physical realm was being limited by the circlet, whatever it was.
Zarl's march knocked beds aside and set up a dozen alarms from the machines connected to their occupants, but he didn't spare any attention for it. He was almost on the former navy captain when the glow of the gems intensified, and rays of light burst from them to reach all of the humans lying down in the room. In the corner of his eyes, Zarl saw that each of those who were touched by a beam of light vanished, leaving only an empty bed behind. And as the last of the patients vanished into thin air, the light gathered around Tarek, and turned into a circle of pure blackness, looking similar to the Warp breach that had delivered Zarl unto Parecxis Alpha – yet the former Night Lord knew that this was entirely different.
Cold realization hit Zarl as he understood that no matter how different the principles behind their functioning might be, the function of the two portals was the same. He forced his limbs to move faster, and rushed toward Tarek. But before he could fasten his fist around the human's neck, Tarek rolled onto his bed and plunged through the blackness. Just before he vanished, his eyes locked with Zarl's own, and the Legionary saw that they shone with the same inner light as the gems.
'No !' Zarl shrieked as the opening closed, taking his prey with it. 'Blood of the Gods, no !'
At the very moment he realized that he had failed in his goal, the chains on his soul closed in, crushing his essence in an agonizing grip. The Astartes fell to his knees, clutching his chest with his good hand while the tip of his blade grated on the floor uselessly. Despite the pain, his vision was still clear, and he saw the floor before his eyes start to melt away. Immediately, he understood what was happening, and raw terror enveloped him.
'Please !' he begged, forsaking all dignity in his desperation. 'Don't ! I will find him. I swear it ! I will give you anything you want ! Please, don't take me back there ! The Coven can help me find him, whatever sorcery he has used ! I just need more time !'
But the Neverborn didn't listen to his pleas, as he had known, deep inside, that they would. They had indulged in a little game by letting him escape in the first place, but they were capricious creatures, and their toy had disappointed them by failing to do as they had demanded. He kept begging until the last moment, his voice growing more and more hysterical. The reality around Zarl dissipated as he was dragged back into the Empyrean, all his efforts to resist the pull or convince the Neverborn he could still be useful wasted. When two Sons of Calth burst in the room, nothing remained but a smear of unholy slime on the floor and empty beds, while the machines still emitted shrill warnings about the sudden disappearance of the patients.
Welcome back, little Zarl. We missed you.
The church was silent, safe for the sounds of battle reaching through its walls. Before the rise of the Ecclesiarchy in the Parecxis system, it had been a warehouse, where goods from the Manufactorums' assembly lines were stored before they could be shipped to their destination, elsewhere on the planet or off-world. Members of the flock had renovated it when the productivity of the hive had fallen enough that it wasn't needed anymore, and religious artwork from many of Asthenar's artists had been brought there. Images of the Emperor's deeds during the Great Crusade hung on the walls, and statues of the Primarchs stood in alcoves, watching over the congregation. But the greatest icon of the church a giant image of the God-Emperor Himself had been painted on the wall opposite the main entrance and covered in a chemical that, according to the Adeptus Mechanicus, would preserve the painting for millenia. Even compared to the rest of the priceless pieces of art in the other churches, this one stood apart as one of the best, and many pilgrims had marched across the immense hive-city to behold its wonder and pray in its shadow.
Four dozens of priests sat in prayer on wooden benches, head bent down. They were crowding the small building, huddled against each other as they recited their prayers. The church had initially been converted only for a small congregation, unlike the majestic cathedral that had been arranged in Talexorn before the city had fallen. Cardinal Tranos had refused to have a single house of faith lording over the others, instead preferring to scatter his priests across the hive, so that each of them could better tend to his flock. He himself had wandered from church to church, his every celebration broadcast across the city for the rest of the faithful to listen to. Of course, there had still been some churches that were bigger than other : the chapel in the loyalist headquarters, for instance, had been able to house hundreds of Legionaries and human soldiers at the same time during the last mess prior to the battle's beginning.
Most of Asthenar's priests had been swept along the rest of the population, in accordance to the plan of the loyalist commanders. The servants of the Emperor sitting in silent prayer were those who had remained behind when Cardinal Tranos had been – forcefully – evacuated by the Sons of Calth to the loyalist headquarters. The arch-priest of the God-Emperor on Parecxis was too important to the moral of the defenders to risk losing him before defeat was all but certain, and the church was far from being a defensible position.
Then again, that hadn't been the reason for which the priests had gathered inside it. The priests didn't understand the exact details, but it had something to do with the alignment of psychic currents and other, even more esoteric measurements. The bottom line was that this church had been the best place for the priests to focus the energy generated by their prayers in order to support the Bound Circle – the psykers placed across the entire city in a carefully designed pattern and tasked with thwarting the foul magics of the Forsaken Sons' heretical Sorcerers.
When the Librarians had asked for volunteers to support their own efforts, every priest in the whole hive had come forward, forcing the Astartes to select those with the strongest will and faith – as well as those who were male. It seemed so stupid, compared to everything else that had happened in the last months, but the truth was that the Space Marines had enough difficulties aligning their thoughts with those of mere humans – they were even worse at doing so with female humans. That fact had been one of the few amusing things that had happened during the preparations for the heretical attack.
Twenty minutes ago, they had all felt the collapse of the Bound Circle. None of them were psychic, but there had been a link of sorts between their group and the psykers, and whatever the heretics had done to them had felt like a white-hot knife going through their brains. The sensation had been mercifully short-lived, though a few priests had started bleeding from their noses, ears and even eyes.
Despite the failure of the plan, however, they had stayed in the church. Part of it was because they refused to abandon yet another location to the servants of evil, but in truth, it was also because there was nowhere to go. The entire city was being fought over by the faithful and the heretics, and none of the priests were warriors. They would not last an hour outside, and they refused to take the risk of leading the traitors to those who yet had a chance of surviving the day's events. So they had remained here, and prayed for the victory of the valiant warriors who fought in the God-Emperor's name – as well as for the safe passage into the arms of the Master of Mankind for the souls of those who had fallen in the line of duty.
They had come from various ways of life, these men of faith. Some of them, like the Cardinal, had been common workers, who had found that the word of the Lectitio Divinatus could comfort the other downtrodden of the Imperium. Others had been born in wealth and luxury, but had rejected them for the service of the Emperor when they had discovered that all their gold could do nothing for their souls. Each of them had a story of his own, but though their paths had been different, they had led to the same thing – and, ultimately, to this place, where they kept praying as the city around them burned.
The priests had made their peace with the very likely possibility of their imminent death, and were ready to fall with the God-Emperor's Holy name on their lips. Of course, they were still scared – only a fool wouldn't have feared the horrors the Forsaken Sons had unleashed upon the planet. Billions had died since the beginning of the invasion, and it was known that the traitors worshipped the Ruinous Powers, offering their own souls and those of others in return for power.
Many rumors of the atrocities they had inflicted upon the population of captured hives had flowed through Asthenar, and it had been the priests' job to listen to them and do their best to appease the fears of the faithful, no matter how scared they themselves might be. Worse of all had been the fact that so many of Parecxis' own population had been turned to Chaos. Sure, most of the civilians trapped in traitor-controlled hives only obeyed their new overlords out of fear, but as a part of those tasked with rooting out heretical cults, the priests knew that many others had willingly embraced damnation. Chaos was an insidious disease, a cancer of the soul that could only be held at bay by the armor of faith.
Suddenly, the priests' devotion was interrupted by a thunderous sound coming from the church's main gate. They rose to their feet slowly, looking at each other for support. The door had been reinforced by the Sons of Calth, but there had been little resources to spare, considering that the church was behind several lines of defense already. After several more impacts, the gate broke, splinters of wood and twisted metal sent hurling in a circle around it.
A wordless scream of hate came from the new opening, and the cause of the destruction stepped into the church. Few of the priests had seen a Dreadnought before with their own eyes, but they had all either seen pics of the venerable Ancients, or at the very least heard of them. This creature was a dark reflection of these proud warriors, with a helm in the image of a screaming skull atop its bulky form, watching the gathered priests with greenish oculars. Its left "arm" ended in a long tube from which a small purple flame emanated, while its right one was armed with a massive power fist that crackled with dark energies as the behemoth advanced toward its prey.
There was nothing the priests could do, and they did not even try. Flight wouldn't save them either – there was nowhere safe to run. They stood still as the Dreadnought – known among the Forsaken Sons and their minions as the Steel-Wrought – tore through their ranks. Those who were lucky were crushed, those who were not burned in daemonic flame. The slaughter was the affair of mere moments, the silence of the priests contrasting with the screams of pain and hatred blasted from the Chaos Dreadnought's speakers.
And as the last of the priests died, crushed within the Steel-Wrought's power fist, the blood that painted the Dreadnought's chassis dripped through the cracks, and into the infernal machinery that was keeping the biological remnant entombed within alive – and oblivious to the truth of his surroundings. The liquid touched the unholy circuits, the microscopic hexagrams that sustained the illusion Techno-Adept Merchurion had woven around the mind of the man who had once been a General of the Emperor's armies.
Images of cultists singing praises to the Dark Gods within an unholy temple dissolved into smoke with the sound of mocking laughter, and the Steel-Wrought saw the world around his metal body with unclouded eyes and unbridled horror.
No.
Through a vision covered in reticules and warnings of system failure, he saw the carnage that had been wrought, saw the blood on his hands – except that they weren't his hands. He saw the maimed and burnt corpses heaped at his feet – except that they weren't feet at all. Both were protrusions of metal, emblazoned with blasphemous symbols.
No.
The veil that had obstructed his consciousness lifted, and memories rushed back in his mind. He remembered having been captured, he remembered the horrible pain his captors had inflicted upon him, and the hatred his torment had birthed within his soul. And he realized, as he saw what he had done, that they had used this hatred to deceive him into doing their bidding.
No.
He lifted his head, and with the sound of gears turning, his sight slowly rose, taking in the icon spread across the building's back wall. Where before he had seen the eightfold star that was the symbol of Chaos Undivided, there was now an image of Him on Earth, sat upon the Golden Throne. The wound the Arch-Traitor had inflicted was bleeding red, rich blood, that fell upon a hundred worlds, granting them life in return for the sacrifice of the god who even now, on distant Terra, suffered so that His people may live.
No.
The sign of the Aquila was engraved upon His breastplate, still visible despite the damage inflicted upon the armor. It seemed impossible that the artist would have gone to such a level of detail, but that was what the sensors that had replaced his eyes told him. The two-headed eagle was glaring at the man trapped in the machine, their eyes filled with accusation.
No.
Slowly, so slowly, his sight went up, taking in the face of the Emperor displayed on the wall. It was a neutral face, for it was said that the Emperor had worn all faces of Mankind as His own, as He was the incarnation of all that was good and true about the species that had risen on Old Earth, tens of thousands of years ago. The eyes of the painting were looking right into the broken man's mechanical own, as if He was watching through them and into the only soul left alive in the church. There was no judgement in those eyes, no fury or condemnation. Instead, there was regret, sorrow, and compassion. For a fraction of a second, the man felt as if a connection was forming between what remained of his self and the God that the Emperor had become in the aftermath of His mortal death.
Please …
Then the church shook as Asthenar was caught in the throes of yet another quake caused by the conflict taking place within its walls. A crack spread across the icon of the Emperor, shattering the illusion of His presence, and Valens Tarsis, once the Governor of Mulor Prime, screamed. He had neither lungs nor vocal cords left, but he screamed nonetheless, expressing all his horror and guilt and pain in a loop of mental agony. The torment of his soul was picked up by the myriad engines that probed what little remained of his body, and the corrupt and twisted mechanisms of the Dreadnought transformed this agony into a scream that shattered the glass of the church's windows and formed cracks on its stones. The scream went on for several minutes before guttering out like a fire running out of fuel, leaving Valens feeling cold and empty in his soul as well as his flesh.
'So you finally remember. We wondered how long it would be before Merchurion's tricks failed,' came a voice which seemed to be made of two different voices speaking in perfect harmony. One was the low growl of a Legionary, and the other the impossible twisting of sound of a Neverborn straining to express its unholy thoughts into the material world. But it was their union which was at once alien and horribly familiar to the creature Valens Tarsis had become.
With ponderous steps, Valens willed the abomination that was his physical form to turn around, facing the source of the voice. There, casting a dark shadow in the ruination of the church's gate, was the winged daemon that had captured the former governor all this time ago – had it been an eternity since that day, or only a few days ?
'You remember who you are. What you have done. What you have become. It is not a pleasant feeling, is it ? I know it isn't.'
The daemon – no, not a daemon : a Possessed, the result of a Legionary sharing his flesh with a denizen of the Warp – looked much like Valens remembered him. His crimson armor was emblazoned with the emblem of the Twelfth Legion, and the symbol of the Blood God burned with unholy light on what remained on his chestplate. The Possessed's right hand was holding the haft of a giant daemonic axe, and the creature's face stared at Valens' optics with flaming eye sockets. Behind him stood others of his kind, keeping their distance with the greatest of their numbers as he entered the desecrated church.
'I suppose we ought to thank you for killing these fools. We wanted to do the deed myself, but we found that their … abilities made it impossible for our kind to enter.'
A distorted sound came out of the Dreadnought's speakers, and the Blood Champion tilted his head to the side, something like curiosity on his twisted visage. The sound repeated itself several times, until Valens finally managed to get actual words through the filters of corrupt code that infested the machine.
'I … will … kill you.'
The Possessed stood silent for a moment, then inclined his head in something like respect, before raising his axe and assuming a battle stance. It was strange to see the creature doing this. Last time Valens had seen the Blood Champion fight, he hadn't needed to use any skill : his sheer strength, rapidity and resilience had been more than enough to slaughter Valens' men. There was just something wrong about the very idea of a son of Angron displaying any finesse, let alone one sharing his flesh with an abomination of the Empyrean.
'Maybe you will. But your skull belongs to Khorne, Valens Tarsis. The Blood God wants it, and he has been denied it long enough.'
Something stirred within Valens' fractured memory – something his sensors had picked up at some point after his entombment, that his cybernetic implants had stored in a database somewhere in their infinitely complex circuits.
'Your god … doesn't care … whose skull he gets. He will take yours … just fine.'
'Indeed he doesn't,' admitted the Possessed. 'If we are too weak to win, then death is all that we deserve. Such is the way of the Eightfold Path, and I do not fear such an end. But I wonder, old man : are you strong enough to take my head ?'
For a few more seconds, the two giants stared at each other in silence, while the other Secondborn scattered through the church, forming a loose circle around them, watching eagerly. All of them could sense the promise of violence filling the air, mingling with the smell of priestly blood to form a potent cocktail. The daemons within them, already on the ascendant from the battle outside, were growing more and more restless. The air around them was twirling with flashes of Warp energy, small windows into the madness of the Sea of Souls opening in response to their excitement.
'Blood for the Blood God,' roared Hektor Heker'Arn as he finally exploded in motion, passing from near-complete immobility to a straight-on charge. 'Skulls for the Skull Throne !'
The Steel-Wrought answered the warcry with a wordless scream of fury, and his own frame began to move. He was far slower than the Possessed Marine, but he had a slight advantage in weight, and neither of the two combatants cared about their own survival. While the Champion appeared unwounded, Valens' body was lightly damaged from the rest of the battle. He remembered fighting against Word Bearers and cultists with surprisingly good equipment – although he realized now, with a sickening feeling in his non-existent stomach, that they must have been loyal Astartes and Imperial soldiers. They had hurt him as he fought to break through a wall – probably the outer defences of the city they were in, which he knew nothing about. None of that matter, though – all that mattered was to destroy the creature in front of him, the only one responsible for his torment that was in his reach.
They clashed together in a thunderous boom, power gauntlet meeting daemonic blade while the Possessed's left arm was pushing away the Dreadnought's flame-spewing appendage. The stream of Warp-fire ate through the floor with ease, while their melee weapons ground against each other. The two struggled for a few seconds before the Blood Champion jumped back, freeing his axe from the grip of Valens' power fist. The Steel-Wrought stumbled forward, but the instincts remaining in his brain combined with the protocols of the machine to stabilize him, while he brought up his flame-thrower to force the Possessed back with a stream of daemonic fire. It burned Valens' soul to use such a weapon, but he endured it. He was already damned by his deeds in service of the Forsaken Sons, however unwilling they might have been. He had nothing to lose in using the strength they had given him to kill them.
Even if all the previous battles he had fought in since his entombment had been cloaked in deceit – and now that his mind was somewhat clear, he was terrified to know just who he had really been fighting all this time – his experience in controlling his mechanical form was still intact. The neural connections that had grown between his brain and the circuits through his implants were still there, and his body responded to his mental injunctions with lighting speed, while his own thinking process was sped up by whatever drugs circulated through his remaining flesh. Without the drugs or the implants, he doubted he would have been able to move the Dreadnought at all – there was more than to the Astartes' monopoly on the machines than their exorbitant manufacturing cost.
For several moments, the two of them exchanged blows, denting each other's armor in showers of sparks and various liquids – oil and coolant for the Steel-Wrought, blood and Warp-stuff for the Possessed. Every time their weapons clashed, there was a flash of searing light, as the energy field around the Dreadnought's power fist met the axe's daemonic aura. Then, as the Blood Champion lurched forward, Valens used his flame-thrower as a club to break his opponent's balance and send him to the ground, on his knees.
Taking advantage of his foe's temporary vulnerability, Valens reached out with his power fist and clasped the weapon around the knot of bone and muscles atop the Possessed's back, from which the bat-like wings of the creature rose. He tightened his grip around the lump, testing its resilience while keeping the Blood Champion down, ignoring the traitor's roars of fury.
Suffer.
With a final exertion of strength accompanied by a scream of triumph, forcing his mechanical limb to move by channelling all of his hatred into the Tenth Legion implants that had marked him for his fate in the first place, the Steel-Wrought closed his power fist and ripped out the wings of the Blood Champion. The mutated bones that linked the wings to rest of the Possessed's body broke under the strain, and dark blood poured from the wound as both World Eater and daemon of Khorne screamed in shared agony.
But pain was probably as familiar to Hektor Heker'Arn as it was to the Steel-Wrought, and the Blood Champion whirled around to face his enemy once more, his axe held high. With a shriek of pure bloodlust, he brought the daemonic weapon down, and the blade pierced straight through the Dreadnought's hull, propelled by the rage-fuelled strength of the Possessed. It reached into the sarcophagus, spilling the fluids that sustained the prisoner's existence, and smashed the skull of Valens Tarsis apart.
At long last, darkness claimed the Steel-Wrought, and his hate faded into oblivion – while the Blood Champion continued screaming in pain, the rest of the Possessed scattering away from his rage.
Thank you.
Pareneffer, Sorcerer and Fleshmaster of the Forsaken Sons, watched through his mind's eye as a group of Sons of Calth and their allies prepared to make their last stand. Their lines of retreat had been cut, and they had found themselves surrounded by Chaotic troops, unable to pierce through and join with the rest of the loyalist forces. Instead, they had dug down in what had been supposed to be a temporary position, and dared the mortal troops that made up the bulk of the Forsaken Sons' western assault to come and get them. The Sorcerer counted their soul-fires, and came up with thirty-six Astartes and around five hundred human soldiers – the ratio of human to Space Marine in the defenders' ranks had changed dramatically in the last hours, as the weaker soldiers died in droves while the Sons of Calth endured. Still, despite the horrible casualties they had taken so far and the fear that radiated from them, the men and women who had sworn to defend Asthenar stood firm, ready to meet their enemies head-on in the name of their False Emperor.
But so far, there had been no attack. At Pareneffer's command, the various cults and factions were holding their own ground, forming a loose circle around the loyalists' position – far enough to avoid being shot, but close enough to pick up on any attempt to escape. Several of the sub-commanders had chaffed at being ordered to stand around like city guards, especially when there were still more enemies to kill and glory to claim, but none had dared to defy the will of the Fleshmaster. He had sensed their confusion at their orders, but it didn't matter to him. They would do as he commanded, and right now, his command was to keep the area where he was about to unleash his greatest creations isolated.
Pareneffer's work on the Children of Woe had been excruciatingly difficult in the latest stages, until he had had the last of many flashes of inspiration. The key had been to sacrifice two of his latest creations by merging the parts of their genetic structure that were somewhat stable into the non-viable segments of the others'. Only three Children of Woe had survived that final phase of their growth, but they were both magnificent and terrible to behold, even in stasis. As the Servant was making the final preparations for their release, Pareneffer took one more look at his creations, his heart swelling with pride. Though he hadn't spoken them to anyone, in the privacy of his own thoughts, he had attributed a name to each of them : the Weeping Angel, the Black Dragon, and the Broken Wolf.
The Weeping Angel was the product of his works on Sanguinius' gene-code, harvested from his divine blood when it had been spilled by the Warmaster on the Vengeful Spirit's decks. Like the Primarch of the Ninth Legion, it had feathered wings, but there ended the similarities between the two. The Weeping Angel's wings were black, and his face was as monstrous as Sanguinius' had been fair. The creature's mouth was filled with fangs designed to drain the blood from its victims, though Parennefer doubted its metabolism was stable enough to take in nutrients from any source other than the feeding tubes of its life-pod. Twin rivulets of blood ran from the Child's eyes endlessly, the color of the liquid changing each time the creature's biology reorganized itself at the whim of Chaos. It had no hands nor feet, but clawed talons.
The Black Dragon had been wrought from the shattered bones of Vulkan, gathered from his ever-regenerating flesh on the fields of Isstvan V, and trophies taken by the Night Lords which had held the Primarch of the Salamanders captive while they tried – and failed – to kill him. The Sorcerer had been unable to pierce the secret of Vulkan's immortality – he suspected there was more to it than mere genetic wonder – but the touch of the Warp had altered the Child of Woe into something almost indestructible nonetheless. Black scales harder than ceramite covered the entirety of its body, yet its limbs were still flexible. A muscular tail grew from the creature's lower back, ending in a lump of scaled flesh covered in spikes of bone.
The Broken Wolf was the most flawed of Pareneffer's creations, because he had had the least material to work with. Barely a few locks of hair from the Lord of Fenris, picked up by Thousand Sons warriors during the Burning of Prospero in the hope that they could be used against the Primarch of the Vlka Fenryka. A vain hope, to be sure – the Wolf King was warded against all such attempts by his Rune Priests and his own psychic abilities, no matter how much the hypocrite denied their existence. What the Sorcerer had been able to create was a thing straight out of the myths of Old Earth, when stories had talked of creatures half-man and half-wolf which stalked the woods in search of prey. Grey fur covered it, and its head was that of the beasts that often followed the sons of Russ to war. From what his careful psychic probing into the creature's mind during the brief periods when the stasis field was lifted had told him, its every moment was spent in agony. The pain came from its malformed lower limbs, which were always shifting from a humanoid structure to a canine one, with the articulations of the knee breaking and putting itself back the other way each time.
'Preparations are complete, Great One,' came the voice of the Servant, dragging the Sorcerer away from his contemplations.
The creature held up a datapad, which blinked with the demand for confirmation. Pareneffer picked up the device and walked up back into the Thunderhawk which had carried him and the Children of Woe to the city, the Servant following behind him. The gunship, painted in black and bearing the emblem of the Forsaken Sons, had been requisitioned by Pareneffer prior to the battle – and that hadn't been easy, considering how the warband was pouring almost every resource it had at the hive-city. But he needed the personal transport, and the fact that he had saved the life of the human leader on the western front should make up for the absence of the gunship in the rest of the deployment plans. He intended to watch the experiment from above, using his psychic powers to balance the lack of visibility due to the ruination of the hive.
He made his way to the pilot's canopy, sat in the co-pilot's chair, and ordered the servitor-pilot to take them off. As the engines roared, he finally spat on the datapad, letting its mechanisms sample his DNA and confirm his identity. After a slightly longer delay than he would have expected – which could be due to the datapad malfunctioning or to his own mutations – the device acknowledged his command, and disactivated the stasis fields that had kept the Children of Woe out of the normal flux of time ever since they had been taken out of their nutrition pods aboard the Hand of Ruin. Then, he reached out with his sixth sense, taking care to shield his mind against the predations of the countless Neverborn that swarmed the psychic plane. He reached for the serenity of the lower Enumerations, which would allow him to observe without his own emotions and expectation clouding his sight, and the Materium laid exposed before his sight, presenting itself as a vast grey expanse parsed with figures of light where the souls of the living gave base matter a presence in the Empyrean. The soul-fires of the Sons of Calth were bright and strong, far more so than those of the mortals accompanying them … but those of his creations were fiercer still, if not as devoid of impurities.
The emergence of the Children of Woe from their pods was slow and hesitant, as their creator had known it would. The creatures were quite literally being born right now : this was the first time in their existences that they were awake and free of any restraint. It was also the first time they were able to feel the full pain of their flawed bodies, and the three cloned Primarchs screamed in agony as their nerves began to carry pain signals to their Warp-twisted brains. That level of pain would have killed an unaugmented human, and incapacitated even most Astartes. But the Children of Woe were tougher than any Space Marine, and they endured the suffering of they merely existing.
Pareneffer reached out to them, carefully shielding his thoughts from their agony. Establishing only the slightest of mental connection, he sent a simple instruction through whatever passed for their minds :
Advance. Search. Kill.
The three abominations of unholy science twisted in response to the intrusion into their thoughts, but began to move – slowly at first, then faster and faster as their giant bodies gathered momentum. As they drew nearer to the loyalists, their screams turned from pain to fury. They could smell the scent of the Sons of Calth, their untainted blood, their pure genetics, and though they did not understand it, it caused them to remember their own monstrosity and fuelled them with hatred. That had been one of the genius strokes that had guided their creation : their repulsion for anything untouched by the Warp was what made it reasonably sure that they wouldn't turn on the Forsaken Sons. All Legionaries aboard the Hand of Ruin had been altered by the Dark Gods in some way, and it was Pareneffer's hope that the Children of Woe would recognize him and his brothers as kindred.
The defenders finally saw the source of the horrid screams, and the Sorcerer relished their reaction. First, there was a moment of shock as they took in the monsters rushing toward them. Only a few of them fire at the creatures, but they either miss or fail to penetrate their hide. Then came horror, as the Sons of Calth saw the wings, the black scales, and the wolf-like appearance. Realization crept into the minds of Guilliman's sons, and horror was followed by disgust and outrage. Warriors who had fought in the Great Crusade, who had stood as Calth burned around them, lost their calm at the sight of the Children of Woe. They screamed in denial of the blasphemy rendered into flesh before them, screamed in horror at what their enemies had wrought. Space Marines who had held the line as the galaxy burned rushed toward the abominations, their minds filled with the desire – the need, aching down to their very souls – to destroy them. The human soldiers, already terrified, looked dumbfounded as their noble protectors abandoned formation in their counter-charge. They did not comprehend the enormity of the Children of Woe's blasphemy, and even if they had known how Pareneffer had created them, they still wouldn't have – not really.
The Sons of Calth's reaction had something to do with their genetics. During the Great Crusade, it had been noted through all Legions that the mere presence of a Primarch inspired respect to any Space Marine, even if it wasn't his own gene-sire. Humans merely felt overwhelmed by their power, but Astartes felt an instinctive connection to them, an urge to obey. Even now, Pareneffer wasn't certain if that had been a planned feature of the False Emperor's genetic project – while it made the Primarchs more effective commanders, it had also allowed Lorgar to command his sons into rebellion without many of them resisting it. But whatever the origin of that natural respect was, the Children of Woe twisted it into an overwhelming hatred. One of the reasons the Sorcerer had kept his work secret had been the possibility that, even if they agreed with the idea, his brothers would be unable to stop themselves from destroying the Children out of this instinctive disgust. Pareneffer himself had been affected by it at the beginning of his work, but he had grown used to the ever-present impulse to destroy his creations at about the same time he had called the Servant to replace the assistants he had killed in his last fit of rage.
With the sound of claws meeting ceramite and chainswords meeting cloned, twisted flesh, Astartes and Children of Woe clashed, and for the first time, Pareneffer saw his creations in combat. He had hoped that they would face the humans first, to give them some practice with the use of their bodies' natural weapons, but this was probably just as well. The Forsaken Sons had enough ways to kill mortals already – it was weapons to kill Space Marines that Arken truly needed.
And kill Space Marines they did. There was no denying that the Sons of Calth fought well, much as it galled Pareneffer to credit the lapdogs of the False Emperor with anything. Even the blind rage caused by the sight of the Children of Woe was quickly repressed as sergeants restored order among their squads. But that wasn't enough. Bolt shells slammed into the clones' bodies, only to either bounce off scaled skin or leave superficial wounds that healed almost as soon as they appeared, their detonation mechanisms ruined by the Warp energy coursing through the creatures' every cell. Melee weapons were more successful when those wielding them managed to score a blow, but the Children's Warp-infused biology kept them alive no matter what damage they endured.
In return, the clones tore through ceramite and transhuman flesh with fang and claws, or used their own limbs as blunt weapons with enough strength to shatter even Astartes bone. The scent of blood being spilled drove them into a frenzy, and Pareneffer watched wit a cold smile as the Weeping Angel drank the lifeblood of one of Sanguinius' nephews. The Sorcerer couldn't hear what the loyalists were shouting, but he felt their rage and horror, and the growing, bitter taste of failure as more of their number went down. Yet the sons of Guilliman kept fighting, and eventually their oh-so-vaunted courage and honor – Pareneffer would rather credit their numeric superiority – began to show what they were worth.
The Black Dragon went down first, under the blades of twelve Space Marines working in perfect unison to literally hack it apart with their chainswords and power weapons. The creature took nine of them with it into the Sea of Souls before its altered biology finally shut off under the strain, and Pareneffer felt its passing as a violent burst of psychic energy that fried the brains of the last three Sons of Calth. The last thing to pass through the creature's mind was a wordless mixture of pain, rage, and relief.
To Pareneffer's dismay, distant as he was from his emotions at the moment, the Broken Wolf fell next. Barely nine Sons of Calth remained when one of them tried to punch the clone in what passed for its face with a ceramite-clad fist. The Wolf opened its canine jaw wide and bit off the limb at the elbow – swallowing the primed melta-grenade the loyalist had concealed in his fist. The detonation vaporised much of the Child's physical form, but pieces of fur and bone remained hovering in the air for a few seconds, linked by threads of shimmering Warp energy, forming a rough outline of the Wolf's body. The lines dissipated soon, and the howling, enraged spirit of the Broken Wolf was cast down into the Empyrean.
The Weeping Angel quickly avenged its kindred. To the surprise of its creator, it did so by picking up a fallen chainsword, the weapon looking comically small and out of place in the oversized talons it had for hands. There was no style or finesse in how it wielded the blade, but its speed and strength were enough to cut down the few remaining Sons of Calth. The last of them died when the Angel's stolen weapon lodged itself into his chest, where the last Child of Woe left it as the armored corpse fell to the ground.
'Bring us down,' Pareneffer ordered the servitor-pilot after he returned his astral body to his physical frame.
The test had been concluding, even if it had cost him two of his creations. Now for the last part : verifying that the Children of Woe could be recovered after deployment, and what their reaction to the presence of a Forsaken Son would be. If the Weeping Angel turned hostile and attacked him, the Sorcerer was confident that, given the creature's already weakened state, he would be able to defend himself. It would be a shame if that happened, though.
The Thunderhawk landed amidst the ruination of the loyalists' position, crushing corpses as it did so. The landing bay opened, and Parennefer descended, the Servant following behind him. The surviving humans cowered away from him, their fear washing over his senses, but he ignored them. They weren't a threat anymore – fear had broken them, not because of any lack of courage on their part, but simply because the battle had been too horrifying. They didn't know what the last remaining Child was, but their terrified imaginations were providing them with all kinds of possibilities, many of which were even more disturbing than the actual origin of the creature. And they did recognize Pareneffer for a Sorcerer. They wouldn't try to attack him – in fact, they would do nothing that may draw his attention or that of the Angel on them. Truly, Pareneffer had underestimated the value of the Children of Woe as instruments of terror. He would need to mention it in his report to Arken - it would be another point in his favor when he asked for the resources to scale up the project. Already he could imagine more Children of Woe being unleashed on entire worlds, breaking whole Chapters of loyalists without the actual Forsaken Sons needing to risk their lives.
The Weeping Angel was wandering aimlessly amid the destruction it and its brethren had wrought. As Pareneffer approached it cautiously, it turned from its inspection of the Astartes' corpses and looked straight at its maker. Its face was too distorted to be able of displaying any expression beyond its perpetual agony, but the Sorcerer felt its uncertainty as its senses registered his own … alteration by the hand of Chaos. He held up his left hand in a pacifying gesture, his right still tightened around his staff. The Angel seemed to pick up his intentions –
A cold, sharp pain pierced through Pareneffer's lower back, and he stumbled before falling to his knees as the unfamiliar sensation spread across his flesh. He felt his strength leaving him, and his staff dropped to the ground as he was forced to use his arms to prevent himself from falling flat on his chest. He tried to call upon the Warp to heal whatever affliction had stricken him, but he found his mind hazy, and couldn't raise his awareness into even the lowest Enumerations. It was all he could do to turn his head to look at the source of the blow … and the realization of where it had come from froze him in place.
The Servant – the pathetic, weak-willed, obedient, competent spawn of one of his colleagues' experiments – was holding something that looked like a shard of glass, but that even in his current state Pareneffer could sense was infused with the power of the Warp, and the object dripped with the Sorcerer's blood. Despite the sluggishness of his thoughts, Pareneffer suddenly felt as if a veil had been removed from before his eyes. A dozen memories flooded back to his mind – how, every time he had been blocked in his research on the Children of Woe, a breakthrough had come when the Servant had touched his armor, however slight the contact. He had believed that these moments of inspiration were the product of his own subconscious mind, but in truth …
Casually, the Servant tossed the shard to the ground and walked past Pareneffer's struggling form and straight toward the Weeping Angel, which took a step back, hissing at the smaller creature. The two spawns of unholy science stared at each other for a few seconds, and the Sorcerer sensed the incorporeal Neverborn that had clung to the Child of Woe ever since it had awaken scatter, something very much like fear overpowering their urge to feed on the clone's pain.
Then, too fast for the weakened Astartes to see, the Weeping Angel struck the Servant. Its claws tore right through the creature's body, tearing it to pieces far more easily that when they had carved into ceramite. As if driven by a hatred even greater than the one it had felt for the Sons of Calth, the warped clone of Sanguinius kept attacking the Servant's remains, snarling as its blood spread over its face, mingling with the endless flow of red tears.
The Weeping Angel froze in mid-strike, one of its claws still poised for another blow. It twitched. And then, it screamed. Before Pareneffer's stunned eyes, the Servant's black blood started to move, flowing up into the Angel's eyes and penetrating its flesh. The last Child of Woe clawed at its own face, trying to get the blood off it … and then, it froze again. Slowly, more calmly that it had done anything in its entire existence, it lowered its arms, revealing a face that was as calm and serene as it had been back in the gestation pod. A ripple spread through its wings as each feather changed colors, over and over, before settling on an azure blue.
The Weeping Angel – or whatever it was now – looked at its claws as if it were the first time it saw them. It flexed them experimentally, then looked down at Pareneffer.
'This will be … a most powerful vessel. You were useful, son of Magnus,' said the thing in a voice that was at once similar to that of the Servant and entirely alien – yet somehow familiar to Pareneffer's ears. 'For that, I will let you live … for now. I have already removed you from the board, and with you, no one is left to help your precious master against me.'
As he passed out, the last thought crossing Pareneffer's mind wasn't that he had been manipulated all along while he had worked on the Children of Woe. It wasn't what the entity that he had believed served him had been far more than what he had believed it to be. It wasn't even what the creature's last words meant and the threat to Arken the thing the Weeping Angel had become represented.
No, what he was thinking was that once the creature left, his unconscious body would be left alone with dozens of loyal soldiers of the Imperium, a Thunderhawk whose servitor-pilot had been ordered to await his return, and the nearest Chaos force several hundred meters away – and under specific instructions to not get closer.
It wasn't an especially comforting thought.